


Bomb Bursting in Air

by tortoisegirl



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Fourth of July, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-26
Updated: 2009-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoisegirl/pseuds/tortoisegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the 4th of July, and the Crimebusters watch fireworks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bomb Bursting in Air

July 4th, 1968, and New York City has spared no expense in Veidt brand fireworks for its traditional show over the East River. The crowd is tightly packed along the waterfront, growing looser as it moves inward and breaks into groups clustered on porches, faces turned upwards in eager anticipation of the celebration. There are a lot of people, and a lot of different things they are celebrating. A rebellion that started and ended nearly 200 years ago. An old country that has housed bloodlines for generations. A new country that promises lives only dreamed of in the old homes. Vague ideas like freedom and opportunity and the American Dream.

The first fuse is lit, and the city collectively raises its eyes to the sky.

\-----

Jon Osterman, introduced as Dr. Manhattan to the crowd gathered on the pier, is sitting with a collection of important people on a raised platform facing the river. He’s wearing the suit he only wears to public events with the addition of an American flag lapel pin an aide handed him before the ceremony.

The display goes on, loud and bright. The crowd ooooohs and aaaahs with each thundering boom; next to him the mayor grins as his little daughter covers her ears. Jon looks up at the sky, as everyone else does.

The fireworks hold little interest for him. A collection of chemicals reacting and combusting, energy that was always there changing into light and heat. Made of the same matter as the chair he sits on, the water reflecting the colors, his own body. He could synthesize each chemical in his lab. He could recreate the entire show in a test tube, if he wanted to. He doesn’t.

Another explosion and the crowd is washed in a blue light. For a moment, he looks like everybody else.

Tonight Laurie will ask him what it was like seeing the fireworks so close, so he keeps his face turned upwards and observes.

\-----

Laurie Juspeczyk tries not to scowl as her mother pulls her away from the sight to introduce her to yet another person whose name she won’t remember in five minutes. She stumbles a bit in the white heels her mother made her wear.

She wishes she could be with Jon right now, if just to get away from this stupid party. He’d told her that he would ask his aides but they'd refuse, saying it wasn’t good for public relations to be seen at such a high profile event with such a young girl. She doesn’t know if he actually asked or if he was just speaking hypothetically. She’s still getting used the way he talks about the future.

The fireworks remind her of her nights in the city. Loud, violent bursts; of blood, of adrenaline, of power, brightening everything into sharp relief just long enough to see the gory details (right now, the gory details of a deck full of drunk socialites). They’re beautiful, and she forgets to even resent her mother for dragging her here as she leans on the railing to watch.

Her mother’s voice pulls her out of that peace. She rolls her eyes and tries to lose herself in the crowd. She needs a smoke.

\-----

Eddie Blake is glad the government that signs his checks doesn’t need him to prance around at public events like some trussed up show dog. He’s free to lounge in his well-furnished apartment on the 34th floor with a cold beer in hand (the one tradition of this day he really likes) and ignore the gaudy lightshow.

Well, ignore it as best he can.

A heavy boom resonates through his chest and he remembers the kick of a rifle as it fires. White lights up the sky and he remembers the flash of a grenade going off close enough to impair his vision. He remembers these things, but they don’t touch him. Not like the poor bastards at the veteran’s hospital who right now are probably being shut in soundproof rooms by jaded nurses so to avoid any shell shock episodes.

He takes a swig of beer and thanks God his eyes were open enough to avoid anything like that. After all, it’s all a joke, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to get bent out of shape over some joke.

Through the wide glass windows the city is spread out before him. Numerous celebrations off in the distance create a shifting horizon of sparks and balls of color. Closer to home a series of fireworks cuts through the sky, a wide radius of yellow overlaid with a compact burst of red.

Red and yellow. Red like blood. Yellow like her costume. Red blood dripping from a bloodied face onto yellow fabric, and a sobbing voice telling him to stop.

He turns from the window, grimacing, and pours the rest of his beer into the sink. There’s a bottle of scotch on the counter. He grabs a glass and pours himself more than a healthy measure.

\-----

Rorschach stalks through a narrow street where the bursts of light don’t reach. Three teenagers are quick to abandon their stash of illegal explosives and scamper off as he approaches. They’ll be back, he thinks as he kicks the M-80’s down a nearby drain. It’s the third group of kids he’s chased off tonight, only needing clenched fists and a menacing growl to do the trick.

The light of the professional fireworks may not reach here, but the noise sure does. It reminds him too much of gunshots, and here in the darkness his nerves jump with each crack. He navigates his way back to a more well-lit residential area. An alley lets him out opposite a stretch of row homes, where people are gathered on stoops and sidewalks to watch the show.

Directly across from him a girl stares at the sky wide eyed and open mouthed as her eyes shine with more than just the reflected light. Behind her a little boy burrows his face into his mother’s shoulder. She holds him and strokes his hair affectionately.

Not a bad way to celebrate, he thinks, even if it is a bit over the top. Certainly a worthy thing to celebrate. Decent. Patriotic. Wholesome.

The whistles of bottle rockets sound from a few streets away. His shoulders droop. He’s fighting against the tide and wasting energy doing it. He knows when to choose his battles.

The little boy is now shyly peeking up at the fireworks. He takes a quick glance himself at a ring of purple sparks and turns his steps towards the old building where he knows Nite Owl will be.

\-----

Adrian Veidt isn’t watching the fireworks. His eyes are on the single star that dots the cloudless sky, visible between bursts of color that he designed himself. Sirius, the Dog Star. The brightest star in the Northern hemisphere, and the only one that outshines the chemical light pollution that stains the sky a noxious brown.

Humanity, forever growing and dominating, already affecting something as distant and foreign as the stars.

A circle of green and silver ( _barium salts, barium carbonate, and titanium,_ he remembers) blooms and crumbles across the sky. People so rarely ponder the skies these days, he muses. It’s the stuffy academics in towering observatories and the naïve children sprawled on their backs in dark fields who give time to the stars, everyone else preoccupied with food and mortgages and politics. With war. Compared to such worldly concerns, the universe is simply something in which to exist. It is vast, mysterious, untouchable, and can remain so.

The idea of life out there would terrify people.

A streak of light bursts into thick tendrils of red ( _calcium sulfate and chlorine_ ) that snake through the sky. They look like tentacles.

\-----

Daniel Dreiberg stares transfixed at the fireworks that are so unlike the ones his dad used to set off in the baseball diamond in Tom’s River. These ones are magnificent, shapes and colors and textures and sounds inundating his senses and making him giddy. The goggles tint everything a bit darker than normal, but the brilliant flashes of light get through just fine and he doesn’t mind.

Two orange flares fan out at exactly the same moment into feathered half circles. They look like a set of wings.

He doesn’t mind either how much this makes him feel like a kid again, able to look up at something and be in awe of sheer beauty and power. Every year, no matter how many times he’s flown in an airship he built himself, no matter how much time he spends fighting crime with a group of the best fighters he knows, including one actual superman, this always brings him back. He can simply watch and feel and appreciate everything for what it is.

Rorschach pops up along the far edge of the roof just as a shower of spark rains down in the background, haloing him in gold. He’s never seen his partner in such a beautiful, whimsical setting and he smiles at the sight.

Rorschach takes the bottle of Coke he offers without a word and pops it open with one deft movement. They sit, silent, sipping their drinks as the explosions rings through them. The fireworks paint the white of Rorschach’s mask with red and blue, and Daniel wonders what the mask is made of that it reflects the light like that.

They’ll have to go on patrol, even tonight; any large gathering of people will attract trouble, no matter what the occasion. The excitement of the fireworks will keep people in a rush of happy patriotism, however, and it isn’t for another few hours, when excitement starts to devolve into recklessness, that they’ll have to worry.

It’s early yet. Right now lines of light crackle in the dark, and he smiles up at the sky. It’s the Fourth of July, a beautiful night, and they have time.


End file.
